


17th Day of Winter - Santa's Babies

by unjaundiced



Series: Winter Spirits [20]
Category: Naruto
Genre: 25 Days of Christmas, 25 Days of Fic, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Everyone Is Alive, Gen, Kid Fic, Teen fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-06 10:13:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5412971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unjaundiced/pseuds/unjaundiced
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Konoha Gakuen and its University Hospital have a <i>thing</i> they like to <strike>inflict on</strike> make their students do every year. It's Santa that suffers in the end.<br/>Set the year after <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5412878">Crowning the Nabe King</a>. They're 15 and 16, babies all 1 and 2. And Santa? AGELESS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	17th Day of Winter - Santa's Babies

Kakashi crossed his arms and frowned; he seemed to do that a lot during the month of December. He seemed to do it a lot more when surrounded by giggling girls and fussy babies and overly cheerful elves. It seemed he really was a bit of a Scrooge.  
  
In the stroller in front of him, Naruto was bouncing as hard as he could and leaning towards the stroller next to him. As Naruto's means of conveyance scooted closer to his neighbor's, the baby inside shrank back. Naruto held out a toy fox and began to swing it around by the tail, hitting the side of the other stroller.  
  
" Mah,” Kakashi sighed, wiggling Naruto's stroller with his foot. The baby looked up at him, a huge smile spreading across his face. Then he threw his stuffed fox... Right. In. Sasuke's face.  
  
The baby Uchiha looked miffed and dropped the doll over the side of his stroller. It was Naruto's turn to be mad and he pointed while loudly shouting baby babble nonsense, looking to Kakashi for confirmation and shouted “Ka! Ka! Ka!” with loud determination. Kakashi looked at the two children who were trying to kick each other and casually moved Naruto's stroller back.  
  
" Babies are so weird,” he mumbled, rolling the strolled back and forth to calm Naruto down. He only served to annoy his charge even more.  
  
" You were a baby once,” Iruka commented, sliding under the stanchion rope and rescuing Naruto's fox. “And couldn't you just pick this up? What's wrong with you?”  
  
" Mah, I did my one good deed for the month by even agreeing to come here with you. How can you expect me to do more work?” Kakashi drawled, his eyes hooded and sleepy. “Santa-san doesn't reward you for being  _ more _ good.”  
  
" Santa-san?” Iruka teased. “I thought you didn't believe in him.”  
  
" I don't. He's still a complete farce, but seeing as how we're in line to  _ see  _ him...” Kakashi trailed off and mumbled something about an obnoxious elf. Iruka looked at him curiously before he attention was drawn to an incredibly vibrant elf bouncing his way down the line and handing out candy. It was the most cheerful elf he had ever seen in his life.  
  
One very cheerful elf—one very cheerful  _ Gai  _ elf—seemed to leap at them, a huge grin on his face. His eyes flickered from Kakashi to Iruka to Naruto—who had his cheeks puffed up and was squinting at him assessingly—to Sasuke—who was frowning at Naruto's distraction—to Kakashi again. If it was possible, his smile grew even wider.  
  
" My Rival! How good to see you enjoying such a wonderful and pure pursuit in life as the fostering of young minds and—” Kakashi, as he always did when faced with an obfuscate Gai-monologue, tuned him out after “My Rival” and thus missed the part of the speech where Gai praised his and Iruka's child-rearing skills and that the transference of their experience with their children to real world application was a beautiful sight that reinforced his faith in all of mankind—all this, and loud enough to be heard across the mall's central court. All he knew was that one moment he was making a mental map of the mall and figuring out the quickest way to parkour to an exit before Iruka, Gai, and Kurenai could stop him and the next, there was a flurry of high-pitched shrieks and squeals of excitement and a lot of the high school-aged girls around them started blushing.  
  
" Mah, what did you say now?” Kakashi commented, not knowing if he had cut Gai off and not really caring. Iruka was gaping.  
  
" Gai-kun, I was not Kakashi's partner for the Home Ec electronic baby project, that was Ibiki-kun. And these aren't the fake babies,” Iruka explained gently. Sasuke glared fiercely at Gai, displeased with being associated with electro-babies. “I believe you met Naruto-chan before?”  
  
" Ah, yes! Naru-chan! I believe you were one of the babies we worked with for our human biology lessons! Yes! Greetings! Merry Christmas!” Gai reached out and gently, but vigorously shook the baby's hand. Naruto stared at the strange person semi-assaulting him and tried to grab the bells on his wrist.  
  
" Gai, could you move along?” Kurenai piped up from behind them, a blonde baby in a papoose strapped to her front. The group of girls ahead of Kakashi and Iruka's group had gotten further ahead and the line was backing up. Asuma and Kurenai had the unfortunate task of wrangling the second generation of the Ino-Shika-Cho trio and Chouji was fast running out of snacks to keep himself distracted. They wanted to get this visit to Santa over with before the boy realized there would be no more food forthcoming.  
  
" My friends! I am glad to see you as well! Merry Christmas!” Gai hopped over to them. Asuma groaned and waved him off.  
  
" Merry Christmas, yaddah yaddah yaddah. How come  _ you  _ didn't get stuck taking all the nursery school kids to this thing,” Asuma mumbled, pushing a stroller with a passed-out baby in it. Shikamaru  _ sprawled  _ with boneless ease, arms and legs hanging over the sides of his stroller as he slumped in unconsciousness, mouth moving every so often.  
  
" Alas, I wish I could have, my friend, but I had already taken on the obligation of helping a great man,” Gai practically sobbed with disappointment.  
  
" Aw, geez. Gai-kun, could you hurry up!” Genma called from behind Asuma. He was sucking on a candy cane and gingerly prodding a stroller with a very  _ odd  _ and very  _ pale  _ baby in it. Sai had been freaking him out by just  _ staring  _ at him for the past hour. Babies were  _ really  _ weird.  
  
" Better get full points for this,” he mumbled, grimacing when the baby moved suddenly. Sai dug around in the cushioning of his stroller and pulled out a kitchen magnet, offering it to him. Genma frowned and took the thing, wondering where it came from, turned it over and blanched.  
  
" Oi, kid! Where did you get this!” he yelped, hastily shoving the magnet into his pocket when a group of upperclassmen in the line turned his way—Later. He would find out where the kid had taken a  _ boob  _ magnet from and put it back—Secretly; like a ninja.  
  
He was so going to get caught.  
  
While Gai was distracted with Inuzuka Hana and her new baby brother, the groups at the head of the line scurried towards the finish; determined to get the headache over with so they could finally be free. Asuma almost lost Shikamaru when he pushed the stroller over a bump just a little too fast and the baby jolted awake, glaring and grumbling to himself before falling back asleep. In front of them, Naruto had latched onto Sasuke's stroller and was trying to  _ climb  _ into it as they were being pushed along.  
  
" Hey, baby. Hey, hey, hey.” Kakashi kept trying to steer his stroller away from Iruka's but Naruto's grip was relentless. Sasuke had taken to slapping at the other baby's hand and was glaring fiercely. Kakashi was glad that they were almost next. He wanted to go home and _sleep_ , or read. He didn't care which. Jiraiya had started to publish the books he'd been writing as a hobby and they were pretty good if he would say so himself.  
  
Santa seemed to freeze when he saw the line of teens with strollers and babies behind the couple at the front of the line, recognizing some of the teenagers with a mental shudder. Konoha Gakuen  _ always  _ did this to him. Every year they would send students with children from the hospital to see him and for whatever reason, something  _ always  _ happened. He thought they would be safe since some of their students were working at the mall this year, but it looked like he was wrong.  
  
In his rush, a lanky boy with gray hair almost upset his stroller on the stairs leading to Santa's dais and was immediately scolded by the blonde baby riding in it. The strange gray marks on the baby's face seemed to twitch like whiskers as he babbled at his handler. The boy with the ponytail next to him seemed to sigh in resignation as the gray-haired boy started to  _ argue  _ with the infant. Then a kid with spiky hair and a strip of cloth over his nose ducked jumped over the little fence surrounding the photo area, a silvery-eyed baby strapped to his back and looking a little ill, another kid with longish hair clambering over behind him holding an elephant shaped leash attached to a toddler. He forgot the toddler couldn't climb and had to rescue the irritated little boy from his brief solitude when the boy gave an angry shout.  
  
Santa opened his mouth to protest when the teens  _ behind  _ them all piled through to the photo area with panicked variations of “He's coming!” as they struggled to get their babies out of their strollers and carriers.  
  
He?  
  
Then he heard a flurry of jingling and a loud “Ho ho ho!” coming closer. As babies started being piled onto his lap, the teens elbowing each other and jockeying for position, he fought the urge to slap himself.  
  
When Konoha was involved, there would never be any peace.

**Author's Note:**

> This work was originally posted on Livejournal in 2011 as part of the annual 12 or 25 Days of Christmas challenge. The story takes place by years and utilises Japanese honourifics as a necessity. I tried to use canonical names wherever possible and created original character names as needed.
> 
> Due to the conditions at the time, the writing is a bit clunky but will largely remain unedited.


End file.
